High hardship risk for children in 3+ families

Families with three or more children are nearly twice as likely
to be living “in hardship” as one or two child
families, according to new research and the larger the family the
harder things get.

The report for the Department of Work and Pensions found that 49
per cent of all large families (defined as those with three or more
children) and 70 per cent of those with four or more children were
in moderate or severe hardship, compared with 26 per cent of small
families.

Large families headed by a lone parent were even more likely to
be hardship – 77 per cent in total.

The study found that family size is an important contributing
factor to parents’ hours of work even when other factors are
taken into account.  Large couple families were more likely to have
neither parent working more than 16 hours a week, and less likely
to have both parents working more than 16 hours a week than small
couple families. Among lone parents, 71 per cent of those with
three or more children were working less than 16 hours a week
compared to 51 per cent of those with smaller families. 

The research used a sample of families drawn from child benefit
records.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/IH118.pdf

– More than 100,000 lone parents were refused budgeting loans
from the Social Fund last year because of outstanding debt. Lone
parents received 57 per cent of total expenditure on budgeting
loans, with a total of 634,000 loans worth an average of about
£400.  

More than 95 per cent of the money spent on social fund loans
was paid back to the government. The Department of Work and
Pensions massively beat its own loan recovery target of £488
million by recovering £520.7 million, according to the
Department of Work and Pensions’ annual report on the social
fund.

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2003/sf_annualreport02-03.pdf

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